Wednesday, January 14, 2009

A new avenue for TB therapy !

TB bacteria actually sends signals that encourage the growth of those organized granuloma structures, and for good reason: each granuloma serves as a kind of hub for the infectious bugs in the early stages of infection, allowing them to expand further and spread throughout the body. Which is something interesting in he sense that the earlier believed fact (i.e., masses of immune cells that form as a hallmark of tuberculosis (TB) have long been thought to be the body's way of trying to protect itself by literally walling off the bacteria) is being ruled out?. Scientists thought they were protective, but they are not - at least not in early infection. The bacteria use them to reproduce and disseminate themselves.
Not only do the bacteria expand themselves within the first granuloma to form, she added, but some of the immune cells in that initial mass leave to start new granulomas elsewhere. Those new granulomas then also serve as breeding grounds for the bacteria. The finding (Lalita Ramakrishnan and J.Davis). suggests a new avenue for TB therapy at an important time in the struggle against TB infection (not only the increasing number of patients, AIDS with TB and drug resistant TB). So if one can prevent granulomas that might be therapeutic either by intercepting the bacterial signal that spurs granulomas' formation or by manipulating the human immune system in some other way. Hope this research will go a long way in finding the solution to the epidemic drug resistant TB........





1 comment:

Manjula Umesh said...

Its really interesting info, though brief gave an insight into the drug resistant.....